White screen on startup - can't do anything

[Afisherco]

I’m getting a blank white screen on startup and I can’t figure out what’s wrong.

Specs:
Mac Pro 3,1 (early 2008)
8GB ram
El Capitan (most recent update)

At some point overnight the computer crashed, I came downstairs to black screens this morning and when I rebooted I started getting the write screens and nothing else. I am unable to start in safe mode (same white screens). I WAS able to use command+R to start in recovery mode. I ran first aid on the main HD, no errors. I tried doing an in-place reinstall of El Capitan but that did not help.

I am able to ssh into the computer to look at logs and such, here’s what I’ve found. Any help would be amazing. I'm about to head out of town for the weekend so I won't be able to try anything right away but I will be reading and I can reply here.

Using top I see that the ReportCrash process is constantly going. /var/log/system.log keeps repeating these lines:

Jan 28 14:06:00 Aarons-Mac-Pro lsd[1325]: LaunchServices: Scheme mapping file does not exist, creating file.
Jan 28 14:06:01 Aarons-Mac-Pro diagnosticd[119]: error evaluating process info - pid: 1325, puniqueid: 1325
Jan 28 14:06:01 Aarons-Mac-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.lsd[1325]): Service exited due to signal: Segmentation fault: 11
Jan 28 14:06:01 Aarons-Mac-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.lsd): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 1 seconds.
Jan 28 14:06:01 Aarons-Mac-Pro ReportCrash[1320]: Saved crash report for lsd[1325] version 728.6 to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/lsd_2016-01-28-140601_Aarons-Mac-Pro.crash
Jan 28 14:06:01 Aarons-Mac-Pro ReportCrash[1320]: Removing excessive log: file:///Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/lsd_2016-01-28-140524_Aarons-Mac-Pro.cra sh

Here's the contents of the .crash file referenced above:

http://textuploader.com/57j13

 

[Afisherco]

I just remembered, I recently ran these commands (found on stack exchange) to fix the "Open with" context menu option:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -r -f -v -domain local -domain user -domain system

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -r -f -v -domain local -domain user -domain systemcd

It was about a week later that I rebooted for the first time since running those and this happened. No idea if this is related or not but I thought it was worth bringing up...

 

[DEMandell]

Same problem: solved!

Greetings,

I had the same problem, and after searching around I was able to put together a solution from various bits and pieces I found. In one place, someone had gotten things working by deleting everything in /var/folders, but this seemed much too heavy-handed to me. Since the daemon that is crashing is lsd, which is the LaunchServices daemon, I searched for anything within /var/folders that seemed pertinent.

In the Terminal app, enter:

sudo find /var/folders -type f | grep LaunchServices

and then type your password to enable sudo to work. Any files that come up are ones associated with the lsd daemon, and likely causing the problem.

It turns out that deleting the two files with LaunchServices in their name solved the problem for me.

Hope this helps!

 

[IWT]

@DEMandell

A warm welcome to Mac-Forums.

I'm hoping that the OP got the problem solved before now as the post was from January this year.

I know less than zero about Terminal and its commands; but wonder if your solution could have been accomplished using the much praised and free app OnyX, in which there is an option to Rebuild all Launch Services?

Ian